Friday, January 16, 2009

Excellence

I know that for many people it's natural to call something like the survival of a plane landing in the Hudson river a "miracle" and to say that God was responsible personally. I don't agree, because the obvious question is-if some people didn't survive, did God let them die? What about all the crashes where no one survives?

Anyway, my real point is that it was not divine intervention that saved that crew & the passengers, it was the excellence of the pilot, the co-pilot, and the other crew members. These are professionals, highly trained, skilled professionals. You don't just board a plane and then take volunteers to fly it and manage the cabin. Pilots and flight attendants are sometimes forgotten when we buzz in and out of airports, but we ought to be grateful for their excellence.

We don't have to keep the divine out of this situation, we just have to reorient our gratitude: Thank you God, for the women and men who work so hard every day to take us from one place to another, safely, comfortably, and whose training and skill save us in emergencies.